Nonetheless, there is no denying its piracy of the prose tale.
—
Anthony Lane,
New Yorker,
22 Mar. 2026
One of the headiest things about Adult Braces is how West’s prose style was pickled in the mid-2010s, so her use of caps lock and exclamation marks acted on me as a powerful Proustian madeleine.
This was an obtuse and unpoetic diktat, a showy way to miss the fact that a song’s history—its use over time, by real people, inspired by the exigencies of ritual and action—can inform its meaning more than its mere lyrics ever could.
—
Vinson Cunningham,
The New Yorker,
15 July 2022
Atlanta and its suburbs are a surprisingly Whitmanesque experiment in pluralism, in which unpoetic concrete strip malls substitute for lyrical spears of summer grass.
—
Sanjena Sathian,
Los Angeles Times,
18 Mar. 2021
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.